


Still Family

by einsKai



Category: IDOLiSH7 (Video Game)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Friends, Children, Confessions, Family, Hyouko is a good kid, Living Together, M/M, Musician!Minami, Pining, Policeman!Torao, as in they have a child, no idols au, professional prankster and child!Hyouko, self-destructive thoughts, they're all idiots, toramina gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 08:45:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20255371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/einsKai/pseuds/einsKai
Summary: And then, Minami said the most stupid thing he had ever said in his entire life.“I work from home most of the time anyway. I can take care of her.”





	Still Family

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> It's been a little while since I wrote this, and I'm finally in the mood to post, not only because *drumroll*
> 
> MY [FRIEND](https://www.instagram.com/artbyelif2000/) MADE ART FOR THIS FIC!!
> 
> It's right at the end, so make sure to read all of it, so you won't miss out on the fantastic art (honestly, it's so cute, I might die from diabetes)!! 
> 
> She and I are also working on stuff™ together, so if you're actualy following my person and not only stumbled across this work by accident, look forwards to it!
> 
> And now have fun reading~
> 
> \- Kai

It was raining outside when the doorbell rang. Minami had been making tea, only for himself at first, but he recognised that ring on the spot. He put a second mug down on the table, his best friend’s favourite tea already inside, before he went and opened the door. 

Torao was drenched. His shirt was soaking wet, and stuck to his back, his pants’ fabric was probably rubbing against his thighs uncomfortably, his shoes were making wet squeaky noises they really shouldn’t be making, and his hair was plastered to his head. The only thing that had stayed dry was the baby carrier he wore strapped to his chest. How he had managed to keep only that dry was a mystery to Minami, but the smile on the toddler’s face inside of it was worth it.

“I need your help”, Torao said.

“I can see that”, Minami answered.

He let him in. He must have walked here, judging by his state, and that meant that he could really not afford to do anything else. Torao did love his car and his daughter’s safety after all.

His friend sat down at the dinner table and took the baby carrier off.

Minami got back from the bathroom and handed Torao a few towels to dry off.

“Is Hyouko alright?”, he asked then, taking her from his friend’s arms so he could finish drying off. She was almost a year old now and was already speaking.

“Mimi”, she said and reached for his face. He smiled and let her grab and play with his finger.  
She looked like her mother.

“She left”, Torao interrupted his thoughts. “Or more like, she kicked me out. Us out. For tonight, she said. Then she’ll have moved out.”

Minami felt his emotions darken. Hyouko’s mother and Torao’s girlfriend (or now ex-girlfriend) had never been his favourite person – for obvious reasons. Obvious reasons being jealousy. It should be _him_ holding Torao’s hand, _him_ waiting for Torao to come home in the evening, _him_ being kissed hello and goodbye by Torao. It should be him. Not her. Not that woman, who was only after Torao’s good looks and money, not the woman who never really looked at Torao and saw the person Minami saw.  
She didn’t deserve him.

“She is not taking Hyouko?”

“She said she wants a complete fresh start.”

Minami didn’t say anything, but instead turned his attention to Hyouko. She smiled at him, beautiful, and he couldn’t help but smile back.

“You can stay here until she’s gone”, he said then.

“You’re the best”, Torao sighed. He had finished drying off. “I don’t suppose you have dry clothes for me to change into?”

“You left a sweater here a while ago”, Minami answered absentmindedly. He was playing with Hyouko. She was so sweet… Such a sweet child. Definitely her father’s influence. “And I have sweatpants that might fit you.”

The sweatpants did fit Torao, and Minami was suddenly glad that he bought them a few sizes too big. Who if not he would be there for Torao when his girlfriend dumped him and their daughter?

He had to pull himself together. This was not his chance to wiggle himself into a relationship with Torao. That was not his place. He was the supportive friend. The shoulder to lean on after a break-up. It had always been that way, ever since they first met. And his own feelings also felt like they had always been that way. They probably had. Minami couldn’t imagine a world where he wasn’t in love with Midou Torao.

Torao sat down at the table again and held his hands out for his daughter. She yawned when she was in her father’s arms, and soon she was fast asleep.

“…I’ll need to get a babysitter”, Torao said. “I can’t take her to work with me, and she’s not old enough for nursery school yet.”

The image of Hyouko in a baby police officer costume was hilarious, but also seemed too dangerous to even consider, taking Torao’s position into account.

He was a high ranking member of the special forces. His job was the kind that when he had a boring day at work, everyone in the country could be glad because there hadn’t been any big threats to the population. In high-school Torao had used to joke about becoming a hero and protecting earth from evil alien monsters when he grew up. Aliens had yet to show up, but Torao sure was protecting people. Minami liked to see his face turn to an embarrassed one when he told him that he surely had already become _someone’s_ hero.

And then, after this reflection on the situation, Minami said the most stupid thing he had ever said in his entire life.

“I work from home most of the time anyway. I can take care of her.”

♫

Minami had fit into Torao and Hyouko’s life like a missing puzzle piece. She had been one when he had moved in, and now she was three, and he was still living with them.

His presence had bled into Torao’s apartment like a fungus, devouring anything that was still left of Hyouko’s mother. Torao didn’t seem to mind, he himself had thrown away pictures and leftover belongings of hers, instead opting for hanging up pictures of their high-school graduation, them going to the park with Hyouko, him holding Hyouko, Hyouko’s pictures she drew in nursery school. Minami always tried to get Torao to hang up less photos of _him_, because he wasn’t technically a member of the family, but Torao never listened. He just laughed it off and told Minami that he was a member to him and to Hyouko too.

She was Minami’s weakness, and of course Torao, and his laugh, and his words that let hope blossom in Minami’s heart (blossom, like a beautiful plant one would enjoy to look at, or was it a fungus too, like he was?), were his weakness too.

One night, when Hyouko was already asleep, and Minami and Torao were talking over a glass of wine, Torao asked.

“Why don’t you get a girlfriend?”

The words dropped to the floor as if they had become rain. Liquid accusations.

“Midou-san…”, Minami sighed. “I told you this once already, didn’t I?”

His chest was constricting, drowning in _truth_ and _lie_, unable to breathe.

“Then why don’t you get a boyfriend?”

“I don’t need a relationship to be happy. I’m content with the way things are.”

The alcohol in the wine wanted to burn his pain away. He had never needed anyone but Torao, and he would never love a child more than he loved Hyouko.

“I just don’t want to stand in the way of your happiness”, said Minami’s happiness, and also drank more.

The tension between them stayed, even when they went to bed, Torao in the main bedroom, Minami in the room that had been a walk-in closet that they turned into a room for him. Taking any trace of _her_ and banishing it in favour of his own presence was satisfying in a way he never wanted to discuss with anyone. Those feelings were dark and dirty, and they were not allowed to tarnish the environment Hyouko was growing up in.

Because not only did Minami feel satisfied that he was making this family his own, he also felt the same Torao did: He was the reason Torao also didn’t have a partner. He hadn’t had girlfriends since Hyouko’s mother, and Minami felt like it was his presence, building a wall around that single father and his child, whom he loved so, so much.

Bricks of selfish envy, stacked up to reach the sky.

The image followed him into his sleep, where Torao was desperately trying to tear the wall down. For his family’s sake, dream-Torao said.

Oh, how Minami wished.

♫

“See, you take it like this, and then you just repeat that until there’s no hair left. Then you use the hair tie, and the braid is finished. Got it?”

Torao nodded.

“I think I do. When are you coming back?”

“In three days. It’s just across the country, and I’ll be playing on two days. And you can message me if you need anything.”

“Alright.”

Hyouko had enough of sitting still and turned around. The half-finished braid got loose, and her seashell-blonde hair flowed down her shoulders and framed her face like cascades in sunlight.

Minami loved her so much.

“Are you really leaving Mimi?”, the nickname had stuck over the years.

“I’m sorry dear”, he said. “I’ll bring souvenirs.”

She hugged him goodbye, and he patted her head. Then Torao stood in front of him.

“Am I not getting a goodbye kiss?”, he asked and grinned.

Minami swatted his shoulder and turned around to take his taxi to the airport.

♫

“My, Natsume-san, your daughter looks more like you every day”, the old lady from the grocery store said.

Minami just smiled politely and nodded. While Hyouko wasn’t actually his daughter, the lady was right about the looks. Hyouko looked more like him than like her father. She had gotten it from her mother, apparently, who had had blonde hair and light eyes and a pretty face. However, that woman was but a nebulous figure in Minami’s memory. She wasn’t part of any of their lives anymore, and it was for the better. Hyouko was four now, and she was in perfect condition, no mother needed. She had him, and she had Torao, and she had her friends and teachers at the nursery school, and everything was perfect.

It came in hand she looked like him, because nobody questioned why Minami was taking his friend’s child to nursery school every day, and why he and Torao were living together.

Although what the people assumed wasn’t correct, it still made Minami feel satisfied about the whole ordeal. Again, this dark, gnawing feeling consumed his stomach.

“Mimi, can we get ice cream on the way home?”, Hyouko woke him from his thoughts. He looked at the excited sparkle in her eyes and was reminded of the true reason he was doing this.

“Of course, dear”, he said, and felt a different kind of ice thaw into liquid inside of his heart.

♫

”Sevillanas Ninja!“, Hyouko called loudly when Minami joined her on the couch. “Look how he’s moving! Pow! Oh, he’s beating them up!”

“Whom is he beating up?”, Minami asked. He hadn’t been paying attention to which plotline was currently going on in this particular long-running hero show that Hyouko and Torao enjoyed so much. It was one of many, and he didn’t really care about the show itself.

“The bad guy!!”

She was adorable when she was this excited. Not that she wasn’t usually very adorable, but when she was watching the hero shows that Torao allowed her to watch (he always made sure it was suitable for her age) she reminded him of Torao himself, when he had come to school with a photo or a toy of his favourite show at the time, and excitedly told Minami about it. Maybe it had been what had made Minami fall in love with him first. Back when they had been far too young to think of love, life a calm ocean in front of them, when Torao had smiled and spoke of heroes with that same smile on his face that his daughter was wearing today.

He was about to go back to writing down the melody that had come to his mind earlier, and began humming along in his head, when his phone rang.

Minami picked up. Maybe it was Torao, announcing that he’d be late. It wasn’t rare for him to be caught up in something at the police station, and Minami almost expected him to speak himself, but then a woman he didn’t know began talking. When he checked the number, he didn’t recognize it either, and the words she spoke let his blood freeze.

“Alright. I will be there as soon as possible”, he answered. “I will just have to find a place for the child to stay.”

The woman on the other end of the line agreed and he got up.

“Hyouko dear, get your coat. We’re visiting someone.”

“Huh? But Sevillanas Ninja is still on!”

“Papa is recording it anyway. You can watch it together later”, Minami promised.

She nodded and smiled, and then ran to get her coat.

Minami pressed the third button on his speed dial – the first was Torao, and the second his management – and he only had to wait shortly until someone picked up.

“Isumi-san”, he said, sounding less breathless than he felt. The panic was getting to his head. “I need your help.”

The arrangement was quick. He dropped Hyouko off at Isumi Haruka’s place, and then he drove to the address the woman had told him. Minami hadn’t been aware that he was Torao’s emergency contact, he realised as he pulled into the parking lot of the hospital.

When he arrived in the room that he was led to, Torao was awake and smiling at him.

Minami stared at him, and then felt his lip quiver. He felt all the emotions inside of him turn into a maelstrom that was about to rip everything apart, when a single one broke the surface. Anger. Though love and sadness tried to get her, drown her, she refused to be sucked down into the abyss, and burst out.

“What were you thinking?!”, he said, from his eyes the anger dripped, hot, wet. “What do you think I felt, getting that call?! What do you think Hyouko feels like, being dropped off at Isumi-san’s place without any warning? She’s _five_, Midou-san. She has no idea that your job is putting you in real danger. She thinks you’re chasing cute cartoonish robbers with masks and big bags with dollar signs on them, filled with green banknotes. What would I– what would _we_ do if you died?!”

He wished the tears weren’t here, the tributaries of the maelstrom inside of his head and heart.

Torao opened his arms. What could he do but accept those hands he loved so much threading through his hair in an attempt to soothe his pain?

“It’s okay Minami”, Torao said. “I’m not hurt badly. They went overboard calling you. And I’m not in danger that often.”

He was lying. He had been hurt. Minami could see the painkillers clouding over his eyes. There had been surgery, the woman on the phone had said, and Torao was barely out. He was lying to comfort Minami, and he’d be damned if he didn’t drink up every single drop of comfort Torao was ready to give him.

As if the wounds were on Minami’s body, and not Torao’s. As if he was feeling the pain.

“More often than I’d like”, Minami mumbled into the thin hospital bedsheet. It was rough like wet sand on skin.

“Should we do something together soon?”, Torao asked. “As a family I mean.”

Family. They were family. The two of them and Hyouko. Even though they were surely the most unconventional family in all of Japan, they were family.

“When will you be released from the hospital?”, Minami asked instead of giving an answer.

“Soon”, Torao said. “I’ll be home tomorrow evening.”

He was lying again. It would be another week before Torao could even think of getting out of that hospital bed, but again, Minami found himself not caring.

“Alright”, Minami whispered, and for a short moment, in that hospital room, Torao’s arms uncomfortably slung around him while he silently cried all his bottled-up feelings into the blanket, it was.

♫

“Papa!”, Hyouko called. She was seven now and growing a lot. Minami thought that she must have gotten her growth genes from her father. She was also in a boxing club and gaining as much muscle as a seven-year-old could have. When she hit her teens, she would easily beat him in arm wrestling. “Pick me up!”

“You want me to pick you up?”, Torao asked and bowed down to his daughter. “That’s what you want? Really?”

“Yeah!”

“Alright then”, he said, and picked her up by the hip, and let her sit on his shoulders. Even though she had fit there better when she was younger, Torao still had no problems holding her. Minami doubted that would change anytime soon. He did stay ridiculously fit for his work as a police officer of special forces. His musician arms couldn’t hold her like he used to anymore. She still cuddled with him and let him hug her though.

Hyouko had gotten a haircut. Her hair wasn’t in braids anymore, but it was still longer than how Minami wore his. She had adapted to a hairstyle she liked to call ‘wood elf’, because two small braids kept her hair out of the way by being tied together in the back. It was too short to be an elven haircut from one of the movies she got the idea from, but it made sense to Minami when she asked him to do her hair like that.

She was perfect, smiling on her father’s shoulders. They had the same smile. Minami snapped a picture with his phone. It would be his new phone-background.

They walked along a lakeside, to get to a place where they could hold their picnic. They had spent the entirety of Saturday to prepare food together, and now they would finally get to eat all the delicious treats they whipped up yesterday.

The weather was nice, the perfect amount of clouds in the sky to obscure the sun from time to time, to give them a break from the blazing heat.

Finally, they had found a good spot, and settled down on the grass. It was rich and green, and Minami could almost feel the life that pulsed through it through the soles of his feet.

The food was amazing, just as they had planned, except for maybe the cookies that Hyouko had dumped salt into instead of sugar, but that was hardly her fault and more Minami’s, for getting almost identical salt and sugar pots. Of course they had made far too much.

When they were sitting in the grass, full from their meals, Hyouko piped up.

“All my classmates have parents who are married, except Takashi-kun, because his parents argued so much that his dad went to America. Why aren’t you married?”

Minami almost choked on thin air.

_Of course,_ she would ask this at some point.

He was about to fabricate some thin construct of a lie to explain it to her, when he remembered that she wasn’t three anymore and they couldn’t just pretend that their family was normal. A babysitter and the father of the kid living together, raising her like they were her parents. Especially if the babysitter was madly in love with the single father.

And of course, Torao was faster. Minami’s ears were filled with the sound of rushing blood, so that he thought he misheard Torao at first.

“Pardon?”, he said. His voice was smaller than he liked to admit.

“She’s right”, Torao said. “Why don’t you marry me?”

In Minami’s speechless haze Torao picked him up from his sitting position on the floor and led him to a secluded part behind some trees. He must have told Hyouko that she should wait for them or something along the lines of that, because she nodded eagerly, a smirk on her face, as if she had just gotten extra cream for her cake. Had she planned this? Really? A seven-year old?

“Minami”, he said with a heat in his eyes that Minami recognized but couldn’t name. “Minami, have you ever wondered why she looked so much like you? She looks more like you than like me, even though I’m her father.”

Minami didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. It was obvious.

“That’s because her mother looked like you. _They all_ looked like you.”

Or maybe not.

“Midou-san… I don’t… understand…”

“I’m such an idiot, aren’t I?”, Torao reached up to tousle his hair nervously. “I’m… Minami I’m in love with you. But I was a coward. Thought I shouldn’t risk our friendship or something like that. But now I’m realising that I hurt you. Us both. All three of us probably.”

Minami choked on tears that he didn’t want to spill. He had cried more than often enough in Torao’s presence. So he contained them, locked them away deep inside of him.

“Midou-san…”

“Torao. We’re family Minami. We’ve been for a while. You can call me by my first name.”

“Mi- Torao”, he corrected himself. The name tasted like saltwater and regret, but also like the first breath of fresh air after a head broke the surface after a dive. “How long…?”

“Have I loved you?”, Torao interrupted his question. “Forever, I guess. I didn’t know until graduation though. And how long have I known that you loved me too? That wasn’t that long ago. Maybe two years, a little less. When you came to the hospital. I should’ve acted back then. Wasn’t very heroic of me, huh?”

Minami felt too many things at once. He felt happy for this revelation to finally be out in the open, their mutual love of each other finally spoken out aloud. He felt angry that he hadn’t noticed anything, and angry that Torao hadn’t done anything, and he felt his heart swell over with all the love he had always locked away and contained inside of him for his own safety.

“So”, Torao said, his expression worried at Minami’s lack of response. “Can I… get a chance?”

Minami cleared his throat and looked up at Torao. Sincerity shone from Torao’s eyes now. He hadn’t touched Minami since they had gotten out of Hyouko’s line of sight.

“Torao”, he said, and hoped his voice would carry his feelings adequately enough. “I have loved you; I love you in this moment, and I cannot imagine a universe where I am not in love with you. Please.”

Their embrace was strong, trying to squeeze away the years in which they couldn’t have this.

“I now pronounce you husbands!”, someone exclaimed from a bit behind them.

“Hyouko!”, Minami exclaimed and freed himself from the embrace. “You were there?”

Where did she even learn those words?

“Yup!”, their daughter grinned, and joined them in their first hug as a family. Or so it felt like.

♫

Years later, on the morning of his birthday, Minami found an envelope on the table. Curiously he opened it. His teenage daughter’s handwriting on it let him identify it as her birthday present for him.

“Will you adopt me?”, said a self-made birthday card, and with it in the envelope were legal adoption papers.

And of course, this was no question he would ever answer with no. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed my take on this AU ToraMina :D
> 
> If you want to talk to me you can do so on my [twitter](https://twitter.com/eins_kai) or [tumblr](https://einskai.tumblr.com/)~
> 
> Have a nice day!
> 
> \- Kai


End file.
